Jez Butterworth’s ambitious, captivating and richly rewarding domestic drama “The Hills of California” straddles dual worlds of dreams and reality as it shuttles between two pivotal time periods in the lives of the Webb women.
Though this densely-packed, 17-actor play is more family-focused in its themes than Butterworth’s previous, stunning epics “Jerusalem” and “The Ferryman,” “The Hills of California” — also directed by Sam Mendes, who staged the Tony-winning “Ferryman” — strikes societal notes, too, as it details women with limited choices and plenty of obstacles in an ever-changing world.
In the mid-1950s, Veronica Webb (Laura Donnelly), a disciplined but caring mother, drills her young teen and tween daughters to become a song-and-dance quartet, evoking the style and songlist of the ‘40s girl group The Andrew Sisters. But 20 years later, the four-part harmonies have long turned flat as the emotionally damaged sisters gather at their childhood home to stand vigil for their dying mother.
Seesawing between the two time periods, the play opens in the late ‘70s during a debilitating heat wave, with unmarried Jill (Helena Wilson) — who has remained in the home with their declining mum — awaiting the arrival of two of her siblings, Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond) and Gloria (Leanne Best). A fourth sister, Joan (also played by Donnelly, transformative), left home for a recording career in the U.S. and has been estranged from the family for the past two decades. What led to the family split, and the question of Joan’s uncertain return, hover over the proceedings as the disappointed daughters exchange memories, grievances, and grief.
Designer Rob Howell has created a revolving playing space depicting, on one side, the guest house’s public parlor — featuring Veronica’s desperate efforts to attract customers (a broken jukebox, a faded Tiki bar) — and on the other, the family’s private kitchen. But looming large (and hauntingly lit by Natasha Chivers), Howell has also added a dark, foreboding, multi-storied structure featuring a series of long staircases leading to guest rooms named after U.S. states, another reminder of American dreams.
But flashbacks to happier times reveal a family of resilience, humor and pluck as well as a wily and resourceful mother raising her daughters alone, determined to have them escape the dead-end life in the English seaside town of Blackpool and the fading guest house she runs (and where the family lives), erroneously named The Seaview.
But times and tastes have changed, and only one daughter has fled their declining hometown for the illusionary freedom of the golden state, as promised in the Johnny Mercer song they sing — and which gives the play its title (“The hills of California are waiting for you”).
Music for the Webbs is more than a means of potential independence; it is a refuge, too, as Veronica tells her young daughters: “A song is a place to be… somewhere where you can live… and where you can go anywhere.”
Some may recognize echoes of “Gypsy” — coincidentally, soon to be revived just down 44th Street. After all, both stories feature stage mothers who are forces of nature, though Veronica’s girls are not stand-ins for her own thwarted dreams. Still, in their driven pursuits to make a star of each of their girls, both mothers make shocking moral choices that upend relationships.
Though the play received positive reviews for its West End premiere earlier this year, Butterworth has since streamlined the work, especially its overpacked ending — and all for the better, making it more efficient and satisfying.
The focus, however, still remains on the women and their stories, and the show still offers substantial and complex roles for actresses. The men here are more peripheral characters that illuminate or comment on the women’s world: a male lodger to demonstrate Veronica’s strength; another with showbiz connections to provide a plot turn; a piano tuner for exposition, and Gloria and Ruby’s accommodating husbands to reflect their marriage dynamic. (Two briefly seen children, however, are superfluous characters that only further extend the substantial running time.)
As in “The Ferryman,” Mendes once again guides a finely-tuned ensemble cast. Wilson’s Jill shows more beneath the surface than her dutiful persona suggests; Lovibond gives a sad subtext to radiant Ruby, the peacekeeping sister who is prone to panic attacks; and in Best’s sharp-tongued Gloria, there’s no disguising that daughter’s long simmering resentments and deep wounds.
Also cooly nuanced is David Wilson Barnes as the show biz agent. The younger versions of the women (Nancy Allsop, Nicola Turner, Sophia Ally) all sparkle with exuberance and talent, while Lara McDonnell, as the younger incarnation of Joan, is especially riveting, deftly signaling this sly, rebellious and self-possessed daughter’s exceptionalism, and making it clear she is not only Veronica’s favorite but her mirror.
But it is Donnelly — who scored a Tony nomination for “The Ferryman” — and her dual roles here that ground the play and give it its resonance. Her adult Joan is the perfect picture of one of the lost dreamers of Laurel Canyon — one possessing deliciously languid humor. As Veronica, Donnelly is richly layered: loving, chilling, and heartbreaking as she ultimately reveals a mother’s disturbing desperation, leading to a tragic end when dreams and realities collide into a song in which no one wants live.
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